Rain Challenges Counselors At Camps

As his mother waited to pick him up from a day camp at Birch State Park in Fort Lauderdale earlier this week, Michael, 12, greeted her with a stubborn frown.

"I hate the rain," he said, his hair still damp from the latest afternoon deluge.

Lately, Michael has had a lot to be grumpy about. Rain has fallen on South Florida for 30 out of the past 31 days, but forecasters say a return to a normal summer weather pattern has already begun.

The sun came out Friday in Palm Beach County, allowing residents to venture outside without the cover of an umbrella for at least part of the day.

"We can look forward to less all day showers and widespread rain," said Jere Gallup, lead forecaster at the National Weather Service.

Camp directors will believe it when they see it. The constant drenching presented a challenge to dozens of day camps throughout the region, where children have been forced away from playgrounds and into game rooms and auditoriums.

"It's not an easy thing to handle," said Gina Moore, summer camp director at the Florence Fuller Child Development Center in Boca Raton. "We have 80 kids in our program. You can't just drop them off somewhere and tell them to have fun."

Moore has struggled almost daily to find something dry and different for the children to do.

"We've seen a lot of movies," she said. "We've done roller skating and bowling trips, and the rain doesn't affect those."

But swimming pool trips have been few and far between in an area that brags of being a hot spot in the Sunshine State.

Indoor activities are not exactly what Elijah Cone had in mind when he sent his 6-year-old daughter, Chelsea, to Beacon Hill Camp in Hollywood.

Chelsea said she's made the best of the situation by learning to play chess.

At Birch State Park, the counselors and directors of Camp Live Oak try to work with the weather, using the frequent rains as an opportunity to teach children about soil erosion and ground saturation. They move indoors only if there's lightning, thunder or funnel cloud warnings, said on-site director Stephen Marten.